


in these places i suddenly find myself (tell me the destination of this feeling)

by Jen425



Category: Kamen Rider - All Media Types, Kamen Rider Decade, Kamen Rider Kiva, Tokusatsu
Genre: Angst, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kadoya Tsukasa Needs A Hug, Post-Canon Fix-It, just awkward darlings wrestling with whatever the fuck Decade’s finale was, referenced temporary character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24111175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jen425/pseuds/Jen425
Summary: In which Tsukasa quite literally bumps in to the other man who’d told him his fate was destruction and then death, and, because they’re both ridiculous, they both end up apologizing.
Relationships: Kadoya Tsukasa & Kurenai Wataru
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31





	in these places i suddenly find myself (tell me the destination of this feeling)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Writing_in_SIN](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writing_in_SIN/gifts).



> Hello I love Wataru and I love Decade but the fact that the Phase One Riders did that to my darling Tsukasa is Wrong. Title is from Ride the Wing/Supernova translations on the Rider Wiki because that’s just how I name my Toku fics now I guess.
> 
> Also I blame Wis for making me finish this.

It’s not that he blames them.

It would be so easy, wouldn’t it? But he couldn’t possibly blame them when now his hazy memories reveal his attack on their worlds and he knows they remain merged and balanced by a hair thread.

But.

On the other hand he can’t help but think “they would die to save the multiverse, wouldn’t they? And I fought to the death because I was so terrified to. But they would kill to save the universe and am I okay with that?”

On the other hand he can’t help but think “is this the way to be a hero? To kill and pretend so that the right things happen?”

He wakes up from nightmares that remind him that he was the monster either way for killing them. He was a monster long before that and who is he to decide if he’s really changed?

It’s not that he blames them.

  
  
  


When the Photo Studio wanders into the world he’d made, forcing his predecessors together with the world the Shinkengers had inhabited and a few more when the multiverse had so collapsed that not everything came out quite right, he refuses to leave for the first day.

And he would never admit it to the others but it’s fear. He thinks they know, anyways, when his body and soul are quite literally made of no more than his powers and their memories and maybe shifting dimensions providing him the atoms of his physical form.

He goes outside and he lets the world take him. Not dressed as anyone today but his clothes which he’d worn the day Natsumi’s world was destroyed.

He has to admit he occasionally misses the clothes he loses when the world changes.

(He notes that Kiva was the center of this world. He wonders what the other Rider would say to him now.)

(It’s not that he blames them, just that he understands exactly what they were thinking.)

  
  
  


It’s only funny because he quite literally runs into Kiva on the street.

“Hey!”

“Excuse me,” Kiva says.

Tsukasa takes it as a point of pride that he recognizes Kiva a solid ten seconds before he does, trying to quickly make his escape.

He doesn’t make it.

“Decade?” Kiva asks. “What are you…”

“Doing here?” Tsukasa offers. Kiva looks almost embarrassed at asking. “To be honest, I’ve been avoiding this world.”

“Oh,” Kiva offers. “You know, we were really glad when your friends saved you. It wasn’t…”

Tsukasa shakes his head.

“It was an easy choice,” he says, crossing his arms and feigning casual surety. “I’m a monster and a destroyer. I’m sure you’ve done it before.”

Kiva blinks.

“You really don’t remember, do you?”

That freezes him.

  
  
  


_ “The monsters of Kiva’s world refuse to ally with us.” _

_ A smirk. This was hardly the first time a world had tried to be stubborn, but he had all of the power. _

_ “Raze it, then.” _

  
  
  


“The King is my brother,” Kiva says, and Tsukasa blinks the memory away. “Before things were… fixed, he… I mean, I’m half Fangire. I wanted to save  _ him _ .”

  
  
  


_ The leader of Kiva’s monsters, Fangires, glared and stood defiantly. _

_ “I am the King,” he said. “You won’t have our world.” _

_ Tsukasa stabbed him through the stomach and watched him shatter. _

  
  
  


“I’m sorry,” Tsukasa offers. “I… I killed him? Before.”

“You do remember, then.”

“When it’s worth my time to,” Tsukasa offers. “But what does that mean for me?”

“It means I was unfair to you,” Wataru says. “And I’m sorry.”

“I killed you, too,” Tsukasa says, before he can stop himself. “Fairly easily.”

Kiva just laughs.

“Let me show you something,” he says. “If you aren’t busy.”

And Tsukasa can’t believe himself, but he simply nods.

  
  
  


Tsukasa recognizes Castle Doran, even if it’s not built into a building or helping Kiva fight him. He stares between it and Kiva, warily.

He thinks  _ I could take him; I’ve done it before! _

He thinks  _ I don’t want to fight the real heroes, not again. _

“You know, I almost made myself King,” Kiva explains, not looking towards Tsukasa. “My brother was, and is again since the Rider War ended and the worlds reset, a good person, but he saw Humans as simply food… that’s not why I did it, though. I did it because I wanted to save him and because I loved him.”

He turns back to Tsukasa.

“And I turned back towards an amnesiac teenager and told him his duty was to destroy and then to die,” he says. “As though that didn’t make me more a monster than my demon blood ever could.”

If it were any other situation, nearly any other person, Tsukasa would have said something like “I get the gist of it; you’re sorry for hurting someone so glorious.”

Not here.

“I killed you,” Tsukasa says. “I killed you and caused Wataru to cease existing. I killed dozens of Riders and that’s only what I can remember clearly.”

“We told you to die,” Kiva replies. “Your reaction was human.”

“And if someone told you that you’d failed so  _ you _ had to die?” Tsukasa question.

The other Rider looks away.

“There was a time I would have believed them, actually,” Kiva admits. His eyes are downcast and nearing the darkness they had previously sent Tsukasa’s way. “But those weren’t exactly my best moments.”

Tsukasa smirks, turning away.

“That’s what I thought,” he says. “I’ll never be a good person, Kiva.”

“Well, as far as I’m concerned, De—Kadoya-san,” Kiva replies calmly. “You’re already a hero.”

  
  
  


“You know if there was another way a lot of us would have taken it,” Kiva offers, on their return to the city. “I would have, too.”

“Well, Dai-Shocker wanted the worlds merged,” Tsukasa replies calmly as though he can’t still taste the mix of sewer water and fear from his world. “I was happy to oblige.”

As though he can’t remember smiling at the knowledge that he could break the multiverse and make his job much easier in the process. If he got his hand a little dirtier in the time before and did more than play with his abilities.

(He doesn’t quite remember when he did it, though. In a battle? Possibly?

He remembers…

Black.

Fear.)

Kiva looks at him.

“How much power did you have?”

“I was no puppet king,” Tsukasa replies. “I just generally followed suggestions if I saw no reason not to.”

He thinks.

Memories are still so hazy, sometimes. But he knows he took his power with his own abilities.

Killed and tortured the people who questioned his decisions along the way.

They pause at the edge of a park and Tsukasa can’t help but try and take a photograph of Kiva, as he stares out into the distance.

“Where do we go from here?” Kiva asks. “It’s been months since the war.”

“And you think I have a fucking answer?” Tsukasa asks. “I wasn’t supposed to survive.”

“Well, what are you doing now?”

“Traveling. The journey is my world. And my story.”

Kiva, so slightly, flinches. Closes his eyes.

“I feel like my story already ended.”

Tsukasa lets himself smirk. This is something he understands, at least.

“Everyone has a story, no matter how minuscule, a record of their existence kept in memories. It has no ending, even when they’re gone,” he says. “If you think it does, open the next chapter. That’s what being a person means. Or so I understand.”

Kiva turns to him. Blinks.

You’re really—” he cuts himself off. Curses. “Danger.”

He runs off. Tsukasa follows.

  
  
  


Tsukasa wonders if there will ever be an interaction as uncomfortable as confronting someone you’d killed, or who’s killed you. Kiva is bad enough, and he knows that they’re all still jumpy at each other’s presence, at home, even though they’re safe and alive and fighting to heal the wounds. Even though Daiki’s only left five times in two months, and Natsumi’s finally stopped looking at where a scar from her attack should be and Yuusuke has forgiven him for everything.

Nobori Taiga, King of the Fangire of this World, is different because he’d done it Before.

Kiva checks the King over for injury. To his side, ths stern man who’d become IXA and a woman who Tsukasa assumes to be his partner are watching.

“I’m fine,” the King says, as they all detransform. “This is hardly the first time someone’s tried to kill me.”

Kiva flinches, curling in on himself at those particular words.

“It… isn’t usually an alliance,” he says. He looks at Tsukasa and then away when Tsukasa returns the stare.

“I’m not sure I like the sound of the traditionalists working together,” the woman says.

“Certainly not with the inevitability of the Neo-Fangire,” IXA adds.

The four are standing together and focused, in moments. Tsukasa takes a picture of it and leaves without another word.

  
  
  


The photographs end up double exposed, but Tsukasa thinks it’s certainly one of Those photographs.

On one side, Kiva’s eyes are distant. Wondering. On the other, well.

With the world reset, he’s found his place once more.

“Tsukasa,” Natsumi says. “Is that—”

“The man from the sub-dimension,” Daiki says.

“Kiva,” Yuusuke says.

Tsukasa hmms.

“He’s no one,” he says. “Just proof that we can leave this world.”

  
  
  


(The next time they arrive in that world, however, he goes out with far less fear.)

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @flaim-ita or on my just-Toku side @dancingqueen-mai


End file.
